THE EPILOGUE
THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER
THE EPILOGUE
THE WINDOW OF THE TOWER
This was as much as this pleasant-looking, gray-haired man
had written. I had been lost in his story throughout the earlier
portions of it, forgetful of the writer and his gracious room, and
the high tower in which he was sitting. But gradually, as I drew
near the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It was more
and more evident to me that this was a different humanity from any
I had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs,
different interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere change
in conditions and institutions the comet had wrought. It had made
a change of heart and mind. In a manner it had dehumanized the
world, robbed it of its spites, its little intense jealousies, its
inconsistencies, its humor. At the end, and particularly after
the death of his mother, I felt his story had slipped away from my
sympathies altogether. Those Beltane fires had burnt something in
him that worked living still and unsubdued in me, that rebelled in
particular at that return of Nettie. I became a little inattentive.
I no longer felt with him, nor gathered a sense of complete
understanding from his phrases. His Lord Eros indeed! He and these
transfigured people--they were beautiful and noble people, like the
people one sees in great pictures, like the gods of noble sculpture,
but they had no nearer fellowship than these to men. As the change
was realized, with every stage of realization the gulf widened and
it was harder to follow his words.
I put down the last fascicle of all, and met his friendly eyes. It
was hard to dislike him.
I felt a subtle embarrassment in putting the question that perplexed
me. And yet it seemed so material to me I had to put it. "And did
you--?" I asked. "Were you--lovers?"
His eyebrows rose. "Of course."
"But your wife--?"
It was manifest he did not understand me.
I hesitated still more. I was perplexed by a conviction of baseness.
"But--" I began. "You remained lovers?"
"Yes." I had grave doubts if I understood him. Or he me.
I made a still more courageous attempt. "And had Nettie no other
lovers?"
"A beautiful woman like that! I know not how many loved beauty in
her, nor what she found in others. But we four from that time were
very close, you understand, we were friends, helpers, personal
lovers in a world of lovers."
"Four?"
"There was Verrall."
Then suddenly it came to me that the thoughts that stirred in my mind
were sinister and base, that the queer suspicions, the coarseness
and coarse jealousies of my old world were over and done for these
more finely living souls. "You made," I said, trying to be liberal
minded, "a home together."
"A home!" He looked at me, and, I know not why, I glanced down at
my feet. What a clumsy, ill-made thing a boot is, and how hard and
colorless seemed my clothing! How harshly I stood out amidst these
fine, perfected things. I had a moment of rebellious detestation.
I wanted to get out of all this. After all, it wasn't my style. I
wanted intensely to say something that would bring him down a peg,
make sure, as it were, of my suspicions by launching an offensive
accusation. I looked up and he was standing.
"I forgot," he said. "You are pretending the old world is still
going on. A home!"
He put out his hand, and quite noiselessly the great window widened
down to us, and the splendid nearer prospect of that dreamland city
was before me. There for one clear moment I saw it; its galleries
and open spaces, its trees of golden fruit and crystal waters,
its music and rejoicing, love and beauty without ceasing flowing
through its varied and intricate streets. And the nearer people I
saw now directly and plainly, and no longer in the distorted mirror
that hung overhead. They really did not justify my suspicions, and
yet--! They were such people as one sees on earth--save that they
were changed. How can I express that change? As a woman is changed
in the eyes of her lover, as a woman is changed by the
love of a lover. They were exalted. . . .
I stood up beside him and looked out. I was a little flushed, my
ears a little reddened, by the inconvenience of my curiosities,
and by my uneasy sense of profound moral differences. He
was taller than I. . . .
"This is our home," he said smiling, and with thoughtful eyes on me.
